Insights, opinions and a point of view from a call center, contact center and customer experience consulting veteran related to call centers, contact centers, customer service and customer satisfaction based on 35+ years of industry knowledge and experience.

Can You Hear the Canary in Your Customer Experience Coalmine?
By: Colin Taylor

The call center or customer service department has long been call the ‘canary in the coalmine’ for its ability to provide early identification and diagnosis of problems and issues impacting the satisfaction of customers.

Despite of numerous warnings most organizations don’t change, but rather convince themselves that ‘friction-less’ service is too difficult, expensive or just simply isn’t needed. We know intuitively that in the world of the customer experience all things are connected. This connectivity when viewed from the customer perspective, is vastly different than from the POV of the organization.

Friction Produces Heat and Makes Customers Hot Under the Collar

Policies and procedures are all too often designed with the company in mind and not the customer, this creates friction. Forcing customers to repeat themselves has been cited as the number 1 frustration that customer have when dealing with brands. Yet the vast majority of multi-channel contact centers operate each channel as separate and distinct from the others. This results in siloed data an information. In operation this creates friction with the customer as the agent isn’t aware of what was entered into the IVR, or the chat or the email when the customer calls. The company may have saved money, by not integrating these channels. It could be suggested that it is customers who pay the price, but the brand pays a price as well; customers remember the difficulty the friction has caused them and that may reduce their loyalty and lifetime value.

“You Can Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later”

There is even a more basic cost to the organization and that is the cost to have agents capture duplicate information, over and over. Live agent time is expensive and should be conserved wherever possible. To waste minutes of your agents’ time, while wasting your customers’ time while frustrating the customer is a recipe for woe. On top of all of this, due to the siloed and fragmented nature of the resultant data, it is harder to make business decisions and to see trends. It is like that old Fram Oil Filter ad; “You Can Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later”.

So listen to the ‘canary’ and your customers. Invest in a fully integrated solution, remove friction from your customer interactions and begin to deliver the informed and knowledgeable Customer Experience you are striving to deliver.

To read how we have help other firm solve their contact center and customer experience challenges click here
To find out how Taylor Reach can help you to optimise your center and customer experience click here

Walt brings over 20 years customer service experience to Taylor Reach with solid management experience, in the customer service, call center and BPO industries, working with companies such as American Express, Sitel and ITI Marketing Services/APAC. Walt has deep experience in eCommerce service delivery management, project management, talent management and leadership from both an in-house and BPO perspective. Walt has experience building relationships across silos, organizations and leading diverse teams.

“We are excited to have Walt on board, his experience and competencies add further depth to the Taylor Reach team and his Phoenix location will help us service our clients in the southwest more effectively, said Taylor, “Walt is an acknowledged leader in the contact center industry and has received awards for his contributions this makes Walt a significant addition to the Taylor Reach team”

Walt holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Midland Lutheran College majoring in Public Relations and Advertising.

Walt is based in Phoenix, AZ, and will service and support, both existing and new Taylor Reach clients in the Southwest.

“I am confident in our team, our methodology and our capabilities that know that Walt adds more depth and breadth to Taylor Reach”, says Taylor, “Since 2003 we have helped hundreds of clients achieve their customer experience and contact center objectives, Walt will help us keep this growth continuing for years to come.”

“Taylor Reach has recently signed new agreements with clients in the eCommerce, insurance, not-for-profit, utility, and, publishing sectors”, Taylor said.

About The Taylor Reach Group, Inc.

With three offices in North America, Australia, Europe and China, The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. (Taylor Reach) a is leading Call/Contact Center Consulting Customer Experience and Customer Service consulting firm. This award winning company founded in 2003 by Colin Taylor today boasts a stable of Fortune 1000 companies. The consulting staff at Taylor Reach each possess more than 20 years of ‘hands-on’ Call/Contact Center, Customer Experience, Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction experience in delivering effective and significant benefits from Operational Innovation.

The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. – Leaders in Call Center and Customer Service consulting – All We Do is Call Center Consulting

For more information about The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. visit http://ift.tt/1nQ8chw or phone Colin Taylor at 1 877-979-8692 ext 102

Friday, January 15, 2016

Research tells us that 85% of customer churn is due to poor service that was in fact preventable. 11% of customer churn could have be prevented by simple company outreach and 67% of customer churn is preventable if the customer issue had been resolved at the first engagement.

This tells us something about the sorry state of far to many contact centers. More than 50% of all customer interactions will occur in a contact center. The contact center is the hub or the Customer Experience. It is, as they say “where the rubber meets the road”,

We all know it is significantly more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one, so retention efforts will always pay off handsomely. Look at your center, are you driving churn due to neglect?

By neglect I mean, do you have ineffective policies that place you in opposition to your customers, or are your processes dysfunctional. Is your training really equipping your front line staff to interact with your most valuable assets, your customers? Is your First Contact Resolution (FCR) a cause of your churn? What about your customer outreach? Do you have welcome calls, do you reach out when you suspect there is a problem with a customers order?

These problems can be overcome and superior Customer Experience is the benefit. Unfortunately all to often we, and the way we do things are the biggest problem we need to solve.

Prior to embarking on his consulting career, Larry held positions as a Process Control Engineer for the Cadillac Assembly Division of General Motors, Senior Manager of Operations for Walt Disney World Central Reservations Office, and was Senior Vice President of Operations for Ross Roy Communications.

“We are excited to have Larry as a part of Taylor Reach, his experience and competencies add further depth to the Taylor Reach team and his Orlando location will help us service our clients in the southeast more effectively, said Taylor, “Larry is a leader in the contact center industry with a proven track record for implementing contact center restructuring, relocation and builds, both domestically and off-shore. Larry is a significant, positive addition to the Taylor Reach team”

“I am confident in our team, our methodology and our capabilities. Larry adds more depth and breadth to Taylor Reach”, says Taylor, “Since 2003 we have helped hundreds of clients achieve their customer experience and contact center objectives, Larry will help us keep this growth continuing for years to come.”

With four offices in North America, Europe, Australia and China, The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. (Taylor Reach) a is leading Call/Contact Center, Customer Experience and Customer Service consulting firm. This award winning company founded in 2003 by Colin Taylor today boasts a stable of Fortune 1000 companies. The consulting staff at Taylor Reach each possess more than 20 years of ‘hands-on’ Call/Contact Center, Customer Experience, Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction experience in delivering effective and significant benefits from Operational Innovation.

The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. – Leaders in Call Center and Customer Experience consulting – It’s All We Do

For more information about The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. visit http://ift.tt/1nQ8chw or phone Colin Taylor at 1 877-979-8692 ext 102

We know what our customers want when they contact our organization, they want an answer to their question or inquiry. Research tells us that 56% of customer just want the right answer when they reach out to the contact center. However 44% of customers confirm that they have received incorrect or inaccurate information or what could be characterized as a ‘wrong’ answer. So it should be no surprise that 64% of customers surveyed do not trust the information they receive.

Simply put we have lost the trust of our customers. How can we build or rebuild this trust? The premise of any customer service or technical support contact center is that we are the experts. We should be the local guides that can assist the customer to navigate the potentially difficult challenges of our systems, policies and procedures. Too often however, we have cut corners on our recruiting, training or coaching and because of these short-cuts we are placing unskilled, uneducated or uninformed agents in front of our customers. This is recipe for disaster. We have some of our lowest paid staff interacting with our most valuable assets, our customers, without the knowledge, training or capability of satisfying the customers inquiry. This leads to dissatisfied customers, a reduction in trust and increased interest in competitive offerings and often, ultimately to churn.

So as we head into the New Year, lets make a resolution to invest appropriately to equip our front line staff with the skills, knowledge, training and coaching to be the ‘trusted advisor’ we want our agents to be, rather than the source of untrusted information that feeds confusion, frustration and costs us customers.

I have been in the contact center, customer service and customer experience industry a long time. I started as a fresh faced kid of 16 as an agent in an outbound call center. It feels that every year since, someone has suggested that this year was going to be the year of the customer. So as I sit here, I am not sure whether 2016 will be the ‘Year of The Customer’ or whether it is just the 40th anniversary of us wishing this was the year of the customer.

Regardless of whether or not this is THE year, there are a number of trends that I keep an eye on as I feel they can affect us all in the coming year.

1.The Employee Experience is as important as the Customer Experience. Strategic planning tells us that only one group can come first; employee, clients or shareholders. We have seen business visionaries such as Herb Kelleher and Richard Branson who have stated that their employees come first, as a happy employee will create happy clients. Yet in the Customer experience space, we have focused exclusively or nearly exclusively on the customer experience. Perhaps 2016 will be the year we focus on the employee experience and take a long hard look at what the employee experience is of serving the customers. Are we equipping our front line staff for success or does our training, knowledge management, systems and policies handicap their abilities to deliver the desire customer experience?

2.Focusing on the Employee Experience to a similar degree to our focus on the customer experience will pay dividends. This will result in increased empowerment to our employees and front line staff to solve and resolve customer issues and inquiries. This shift will occur as organizations increasingly empowering customers by offering not only streamlined processes and time saving services, think ‘front of the line, but also choices of who they wish to interact with, based on history, experience or preferences. As we empower both the customer and the agent we will create an environment where better service and customer experiences occur faster and easier than was previously possible, as long as the business doesn’t get in the way.

3.Mobile will continue to re-frame our view of the Customer Experience ecosystem. Mobile first and mobile only are the two development choices that most organizations look at. Mobile is ubiquitous. It is the computer in your pocket. It is the communications most likely used by millennials. Mobile and mobile apps are driving change in the contact center from chat applications to visual IVR. But the rate of change is just beginning. Mobile is often managed elsewhere in the organization often the mobile apps are initially guided by sales or marketing, as is social media marketing and pro-active messaging. However as customers are demanding increased and/or improved access to services and support, both mobile and social have become contact center channels. In 2016, Mobile and Social will take down silo walls as the contact center, marketing and sales all have their fingers in the pie. This evolution will lead to more customer centric and homogenous customer support infrastructure.

4.In 2016, we will finally start to harvest insights through Speech and Text Analytics. These technologies have been around for a number of years and have yet to go mainstream. The increased profile of Customer Experience will lead to increased pressure from the ‘C’ suite to leverage all data available to gain insight into the customer and their interactions experience.

5.Journey mapping has been around for many years in a number of forms. Recent popularity is due in no small part to the connection and role of journey mapping within the Customer Experience design process. In 2016 I foresee another existing process; that of mapping ‘moments of truth’ gain in popularity. This surge in use and adoption will similarly be tied to Customer Experience as people will realize that this process can be employed to better map interaction level (call/contacts).

So hopefully when this time rolls around we can look back and discuss the life, or at least service changes that the Year of Customer had brought to us in 2016. If not we can celebrate the 41st anniversary of the Year of The Customer.

Let us know what you think of these predictions and whether you believe that 2016 will be the Year of the Customer.

I was asked the follow question on QuoraHow can you maintain excellent customer service for a business that relies upon call centers?
The hallmarks of great customer service (1:1 contact with people, solving the problem to the customer’s satisfaction, and creating a customized solution to the problem irregardless of policy) seem inconsistent with the scale of customer service demanded by a business that relies upon call centers.

How can people reconcile these differences and build a great business (at scale) that also provides great customer service?

Here is my Answer:
First you need to understand two things: One, that call and contact exist to serve their customers, though not all organizations do this well, and Two, every customer has an experience when dealing with a company or a call center, but they are not always the desired customer experience.
Good customer service is an alchemy or People, Process, technology and Methodology. It doesn’t happen by accident it happens by design when an organization chooses to differentiate themselves from their competition based on service.

Companies that wish to deliver good service develop and document the customer experience they wish to deliver, they identify the skills and competencies their agents or staff will need to support this customer experience, they design and develop training to ensure that all staff understand the expected customer experience and have the skills, product and technical knowledge to deliver the experience. They design processes that support the customer experience. These are not always the most efficient processes but they support the commitment the company has and is making to their customers regard the service they should expect. The appropriate technology is identified and deployed to support the customer interactions. This is less about what is the latest whiz bang technology and more about how the technology can serve and support the customer experience. Lastly, the company will develop a methodology around what they measure and why. There is a boatload of metrics and KPI’s that you can generate fro any call or contact center, but if your focus is on the customer experience then your metrics will align with this objective. You will therefore measure Customer Experience, Customer Effort, Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction, and some traditional contact center metrics such as first contact resolution (FCR) and employee centered metrics such as turnover and churnover as well as ‘speed to competency’.

Good service is not an accident it is the result of a well planned and executed strategy that is based on a culture or delivering the customer experience at least as good as your customers expect.

My last point on delivering good customer service is that perhaps surprisingly it can actually cost less than delivering poor service and be better for your business. Solving a problem or inquiry on the first contact saves the cost of future contacts, happy customers buy more, happy customers share their experience with other, building word of mouth, few dissatisfied customer will mean fewer negative shares and reduce brand and retention erosion.

Delivering good Customer Service through your call or contact center is a business decision, from my perspective any organization that chooses to deliver poor or sub-par service has made the wrong decision.

Friday, January 8, 2016

Eddie Bauer will eliminate 315 jobs during the next few months and close its call center, distribution center and information-technology department at 6600 Alum Creek Dr. in Groveport. The job cuts and closings are permanent, according to a letter the company filed with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

About Me

More than 33 years of call and contact center experience. Worked in every position possible in the call/contact industry space. Recipient of more than 27 awards for call/contact center excellence. More than 14,000 agent desktops around the globe employ TRG designed operational models. CEO of The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. a call and contact center consultancy, past President & CEO of Watts Communications a large contact center outsource agency. Author, speaker and expert on all things call or contact center.
For more information visit http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com